Quantity or Quality in Learning?

[steve jones]

I am an adult beginner / intermediate (mainly self taught). Iv been playing for 13 months. My first year involved learning as many of the <Gr5 pieces as I could, yet perfecting very few. Now I am working on Bach Inventions and some Chopin Preludes. I feel comfortable with these piece, they are well with in my grasp. I hope to spend the next few years learning a wide variety of music, in order to develop technique and knowledge as quickly as possible. As of right now, I am not as intersted in building rep as I am about developing skills.

With that in mind, would I be better to:

1. Learn as many new pieces as possible, up to a playable standard?

2. Spend more time on a selection of pieces, perfecting them to performable standard?


In other words, would I benefit more from learning to play a large number of pieces, or by taking the time to explore and completely master a small rep?

The reason I ask is that I find I can memorize and learn to 'play' pieces quickly, yet it takes me a far longer time to completely iron out mistakes and become happy with an interpretation. At the moment, I am happy with my progression under options 1 (although I do plan to return to my favorites at a later date). But Im not sure whether I should be better of doing option 2 

Im open to all opinions on this one, as I am yet to make up my mind.

Thanks

[cjp_piano]

Since you said you can learn pieces quickly but then it takes a long time to iron out the mistakes, you should probably focus on learning each piece more carefully and thoroughly.  The reason you still have to iron out mistakes and get the interpretation you want is because you really don't know the piece as well as you think. 

Are you using the exact same fingering each time?  Play each phrase or measure or section hands alone ALOT until it's easy and comfortable and it sounds like you want it to, always using the same fingering.  Then play that phrase hands together, making sure the fingering is still correct and each hand sounds like you want it to.  Do this with each phrase or measure and then connect the phrases and measures together. 

I think it is good to play through lots of pieces so you can experience all the music you can!  But also choose one or 2 to really focus on learning thoroughly.  I think you will find it very rewarding to learn a piece so well that you don't have to think about it so much and the music will play YOU.   

[steve jones]

"The reason you still have to iron out mistakes and get the interpretation you want is because you really don't know the piece as well as you think."

Haha, I dont think I know ANY piece well if Im being honest. At the moment, I learn pieces upto a point where I can 'play' them, at or around the correct speed, without to many flubs. Somes I can get through them without any mistakes, other times I'll make serveral slipp ups. My assumation was that practice would iron out these kinks.

The question is, would ironing out minor kinks be as beneficial to someone in my position as learning a new piece, or two?


"Are you using the exact same fingering each time?"

Yep, I always sort the fingering out first before I begin to learning in sections. Sometimes I may revise the fingering, but I always come to a final decision that becomes consistent. I NEVER just hack through without consideration of fingering.


"...Do this with each phrase or measure and then connect the phrases and measures together."

Yep, thats how I work. Im straight from the Bernhard / CC school of learning (well, thats the only one Im familiar with  )


"I think it is good to play through lots of pieces so you can experience all the music you can!  But also choose one or 2 to really focus on learning thoroughly.  I think you will find it very rewarding to learn a piece so well that you don't have to think about it so much and the music will play YOU"

Excellent, so you think I should mix and match the two options. Good call.

I was hoping to do some Beethoven movements soon (like Sonata No1, Mvt 1), and I was thinking that I should really spend quite a bit of time on this, as it is a performance piece and all.

So I guess I could be working on a few performance pieces, while continuing to learn many study pieces.

Cool, thanks for the advice!

[m1469]

I agree that one would ideally mix the two learning procedures.  I have been thinking a lot about this same kind of thing and have recently likened it to something my father-in-law does with his woodturning. 

He will get in a shipment of wood, and then proceed to "rough-out" a number of bowls.  The wood is still wet so it cuts easily, so he will just shape out a bunch of them and then set them on the shelf for several months while the wood cures.  While those are curing, he takes previously roughed-out bowls from off the shelf and turns them into art, including much more time on the lathe than was previously spent, more refined cutting and chiseling, several steps and different grits of sand-papering, and then completing them with the finishing touches.

I think a similar approach is helpful in terms of learning pieces for the piano.  Perhaps learning them quickly, roughing them out, establishing their large shape within your consciousness... and then setting them on the "shelf" for a while, allowing them to "cure", while you do other work.  I liken setting them on the shelf to allowing them to become a part of my subconsious, I just live with them there for a while until they are ready for becoming art.

Ideally, one would have a constant flow of these various phases of creating art, and there is not one stage that is more important than any other in terms of learning how to create art.  All the phases are important.  In terms of selling the art, however, if one never reaches the finishing stages, there may not be too many buyers.

With that all having been said, I think there are traps that people can get into.  One is that, with a good piece of music, it will never stop serving as some kind of learning center.  It's kind of like a canvas with painting... you can layer and layer and layer.  You can even start completely over, on the same canvas, if you so desire.  With music, the trap is in thinking that you will reach a point where you will never learn more, or be able to do more, with a particular piece.   Ideally, we live with these pieces for the rest of our lives, and our expression reflects our changes as a human being. 

So, what I think is more important than ironing out all of the details of a given piece of music (because that process will go on forever), is learning how to iron them out.  Learning how to make decisions regarding phrasing, and all of the etcs. that come along with "interpretation".  I think more than expecting to arrive at some final point with a piece of music, one's aim should be to continue getting better at ironing out the learning process. 

If doing this honestly, in a sense, one is always roughing things out and the music is always curing within us, even if one has reached decisions at certain times in one's life with a piece of music (I think it's always good to define (in sound) what is one's highest conception of a piece, even if different decisions are made later on in life).  But that's part of the art, and the artistry of one's work will show itself throughout the entire process. 


m1469

[emmdoubleew]

Always work on one piece at least that you know you are going to take all the way. At the same time as this piece, work on other pieces in which speed of learning is the priority (let them go after two weeks unless you really need to learn them more carefully)

[sarahlein]

Very well said m1469!

I particularly liked the example you brought out. 

I also agree that practise alone will not smooth out a piece. One has to have specific goals in mind and know which "tricks" to use to do the work.
 

[steve jones]

Very well said m1469!

I particularly liked the example you brought out. 

I also agree that practise alone will not smooth out a piece. One has to have specific goals in mind and know which "tricks" to use to do the work.
 

Indeed, a very insightful post!

I get you competely about the 'learning to iron out' part. It seems to me that playing piano is all about solving problems, and only solving a wide range of problems can we become complete musicians.

That rings a lot of bells with me.

Thanks!

[alzado]

Steve--

I think the kicker is, "up to a playable standard." 

For me, that's a pretty high standard.  Sometimes I get very tired of a piece and am still not satisfied with it, and so I move on.  Six months or a year later, I come back and try it again.

If I were you, I would avoid either extreme --  First, skipping around so much that you seem a dilettante, and -- Second, emulating some who write in to this forum and talk about SIX SOLID MONTHS working on a single piece.  (I believe if I continued "polishing" the same piece for that long, I would go mad.)

[_tyro]

It's hard to improve on m1469's post.  The only things I might add are
[1] Part of the fun is learning the literature.  You'll never do that if you spend all your time perfecting a single piece. 
[2] Sometimes solving a problem in one place sorts out a problem somewhere else.  Sometimes you notice something in one piece, and it explains why you've been really annoyed with yourself about a phrase in another one.  I don't like playing just one work by a particular composer.  If you're working seriously on a Chopin etude, then you probably should have some other Chopin pieces -- easier, and probably not things you intend to perfect.   My hands just work differently when they move from Bach to Brahms to Debussy to ....  So does the pedaling.  And noticing the differences and similarities seems to help all 'round. 

So much for my 2cents.

[bernhard]

Yes, excellent answers above.

Mix and match is definitely the way to go.

Also there are different learnings to obtain from different stages of a piece. Learning the piece to a playable stage will teach you many interesting things, but if you want to bring the piece to a greater level of perfection, the knowledge you gained simply from bringing it to a playable stage may not be enough. This is a common trait in certain students. They can easily bring the piece to a stage where the piece is “recognizable”, but then no matter how much they practice it, it never really goes beyond that point, it never really flowers. Typically they leave the piece and move on to a new piece. The reason for that is that their practise usually consists of simply doing more of what they were already doing, when they need to do something different.

As an extreme example, consider the situation of student A, who is obsessed with finger dexterity, and who believes that to master a piece is a question of sitting at the piano and “working out” his fingers for hours on end. He may become quite good and flashy at it, and yet something will be missing. Usually such “piano athletes” have an intense dislike for theory and analysis, (“why can´t I just follow my intuition?”) believing that musicality is something one is born with, will happen by itself, or has to so solely with emotions and should not be acquired by directed effort.. Yet analysis may well be the missing link, showing the student the architecture and structure of the piece (both apparent and hidden) so that he now knows where he needs to call the attention of his audience and the means thereof.

Alternatively you can have student B who is a musicological type and can analyze a piece to infinitesimal detail, and is able to visualize a grand architecture the will bring the piece musically together, but never bothers to go to the piano and actually practise the best movements that will fulfill his vision. More analyzing will do little to improve the situation with student B, just like more practice at the piano will do little to improve the situation of student A. They need to learn new ways to tackle the piece to bring it further.

Then you have two different situations: learning a piece and perfecting it. This is the equivalent of competitive sports where first you must learn your sport – for instance if you are a Olympic gymnast you need to learn the individual movements of your routine and then the routine must become second nature. This is the learning bit. But if you now want to enter the Olympics and get gold, you must train in a completely different way from the way you used when learning the movements and the routine. Your goal now is to optimise your performance of the already known routine, and the basic procedure is to pay excruciating attention to the smallest details. This is such a effort laden phase, that it may well explain why so few people get to Olympic level.

Steve:

The question is, would ironing out minor kinks be as beneficial to someone in my position as learning a new piece, or two? 

Yes, I believe so. As I said, you may find out that in order to iron out those minor kinks, may demand different practice strategies form the ones you used when learning the piece. Just doing what you have done when learning it may not result in any improvement (this is actually my definition of correct practice: if you are practicing correctly you always experience improvement, and the more appropriate the practice procedure, the faster the improvement).

So besides the obvious achievement of having a piece perfected, you will also learn a lot about different practice procedures and which ones work best in different passages / pieces (e.g. dotted rhythms work wonders in certain situations but are totally useless and a waste of time in others).

Having said that, I do not belong to the “Brocoli school” of piano pedagogy (Eat it, because it is good for you), so I would never tackle a piece I hate / am indifferent to just because I believe it may be “good” for me, which leads me to:

Steve:

I was hoping to do some Beethoven movements soon (like Sonata No1, Mvt 1), and I was thinking that I should really spend quite a bit of time on this, as it is a performance piece and all.

So I guess I could be working on a few performance pieces, while continuing to learn many study pieces.

I believe in learning only what I love at the moment (“but I hate Bach! And everyone says Bach is good for me!” – Don´t worry, if you hate it, leave it alone. You will find out that as you progress through the pieces you love, your tastes will change. Most pianists come to Bach later in life, and then the love is so strong as to exclude everything else. Alternatively you may never love a composer´s work. So what? There is so much piano repertory that we do not have the time to waste on pieces we dislike. Thinking about your death and how much little time one has left in this planet is a most sobering thought).

This means that if you only select pieces that you love dearly, there should never be the need to half-learn a piece and then discard it. By making sure that every piece you learn is a piece that you would love to have in your repertory will make sure that you go to the end with that piece, and do not regard it as something you do for now but that you may discard later.

So there should be no division between “study” pieces and “performance” pieces. Make your performance pieces your study pieces, and never study a piece you have no desire to perform (either for yourself or for the public)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

PS: Beautiful analogy, m1469.

[cjp_piano]

"So there should be no division between “study” pieces and “performance” pieces. Make your performance pieces your study pieces, and never study a piece you have no desire to perform (either for yourself or for the public)"

I agree.   When I said earlier that you should always be playing  through pieces and choose one or 2 to focus on, I meant that playing through pieces is part of deciding whether you want to learn and perform it or not. 

"this is actually my definition of correct practice: if you are practicing correctly you always experience improvement, and the more appropriate the practice procedure, the faster the improvement"

Exactly!  I am finding this to be true in my teaching.  I thinks it's fun to help a student figure out the best (most efficient) ways of practicing.

Well put, Bernhard.

Love the analogy too, m1469   

[steve jones]

Wow, some great replies, thanks!

Bernhard, as always providing some true insights. Rest assured that Im taking it all on board, and it will benefit me greatly in my mission.

Incidentally, I actually like Bach. I know little to make such comments, but imo a staple diet of Bach makes for a strong, healthy pianist... kind of like spouts!  And Im finding the Inventions an absolute pleasure to work through. Im doing No8 right now, and its a blast. Got the first and last sections down to a tee, but the middle needs more work.

So for now, I am quite content working through these pieces. As was suggested earlier, I like the idea of having several at different stages. This way I can practicing the full range of musical skills, from memorizing and finger learning to interpretation and problem solving.

I can see now that learning HOW to complete each stage of the process is imperitive. Im not going to learn to swim by practicing running!

Cheers all,

Steve Jones

[tibi]

you should do balancing over this two things "quantity or quality". you can get the quality after quantity. more songs will gives many kind of natures and experiences for your musical ability and sense. than when you return to you first song, you will find that this song is not as difficult as you thing. 2 years ago, i never think that i will able to play etude paganini no 6 (liszt) even i had practiced much on it. than i just skip it and try other songs, bumble bee, etude op10 no5, op10 no4, rondo a capriccio op129 (bethoven), some chopin's waltz. when i returned to etude paganini no6, this song is look easier for me and mow it's "playable" for me.